Keeping Touch (2)

Descending green
then climbing green
to crested light
the riders
film themselves
/wearing the pathway down
to the lowest-lying cottage
/to water below
where glad kin
gather family
/and here
where the "Swedes"
outbuilding stood
/and here
on this side-cut slope
/under
the spreading limbs
in their good progress
into centuries
/and here
where the brush fills in
/where the ice-house stood
the men at play
in their first filming
/where you've retrieved
what's left of it
trimmed that ice house wood
to frame Cape Cod
the ways his hand
remembered
it —
I think of the decades treats
/of Richard's
hands at work
on still-lifes in New England
/of
these snows of leaves
the decades
let us occurpy
/as if these were
leaves alone
/were paddles below
that hint canoes
down on that water
/the cottage
in multiplecting snows
/alone inviting us
/and not these
relatives in love
/and love

like the hardest treats
/made known to us
through the long years
of their confecting
/inviting us here
where second
/third-growth
poplars entertain
/where
I am the newest
in their midst
/a relative in love
/descending
to climb again
their own
and mixed topology
/closing the cottage down
/reading
in leaves around
/and snows to come
/and in the meadow-grasses
/meadow-aspens
flourishing
/the course
of standing wood
and grand events
we occupy
/inspiring
in standing woods
this dancing
/closing
the cottage down
/dreaming ahead
our second
season's
openings.

 

© Appetite (2)